hitler was considered quite affable and charming too, when he wasn't out murdering millions of innocent people.

in fact, historically, those considered among the worst people in the world have consistently been described as personally charming. every serial killer is described as "a pleasant guy, kept his yard neat, always willing to lend a hand", so i'm not sure how much i'd read into this.

clearly, i'm not suggesting huckabee is hitler, but those classic descriptions do worry me.

I'm a Republican evangelical -- more specifically, a conservative Baptist -- and I'd never heard of "vertical leadership" before Huckabee started talking about it. Even now I'm really not sure what he's talking about. It sounds to me suspiciously like the usual creative jargon and mumbo-jumbo you can find in the 29,342 business leadership books down at Barnes & Noble. There's also a subset of these leadership books devoted to the Christian market, so he may have picked it up from one of those. But no, there's no "code word" involved here, because few if any of us evangelicals have any idea what he's referring to.